National #Selfie Portrait Gallery

Self-portraiture has a long artistic heritage, with devotees including Rembrandt, the compulsive self-documentarian, Courbet, who styled himself a suave, long-haired Bohemian, and van Gogh, the fragile genius, bandaged at the ear. Today, the genre belongs to anyone with a camera.—Marina Galperina and Kyle Chayka

At New York’s Moving Image fair last March, Magdalena Sawon of Postmasters Gallery presented a project that led to the first-ever sale of “Vine-art”. Sawon hired art writers Marina Galperina and Kyle Chayka to curate a Vine-related exhibition, where they commissioned 22 artists to create original Vine videos. Ultimately three Vines sold, including Angela Washko’s Tits on Tits on Ikea.

This year, Galperina and Chayka collaborate again for London’s Moving Image, this time with National #Selfie Portrait Gallery. Also employing short videos as its medium, National #Selfie Portrait Gallery is a series of “selfie” (digital self-portrait) films by 19 emerging artists from Europe and the U.S. American artists include Anthony Antonellis, Jennifer Catron & Paul Outlaw, Jennifer Chan, Yung Jake, Rollin Leonard, Angela Washko, Jayson Musson, Petra Cortright, Bunny Rogers and Alexander Porter. European artists include Kim Asendorf & Ole Fach, Jesse Darling, Leslie Kulesh, Carlos Sáez, Daniel Swan, Addie Wagenknecht, and Saoirse Wall.

The 19 selfies, each running for 30 seconds or less, will play on a two-screen installation at Moving Image London. One edition of each artist’s video will be for sale at $500 apiece. Visitors are able to become involved in the project by creating their own selfies via an app designed by Asendorf and Fach that will be operating alongside the installation, and also by taking their own selfies via instagram or Vine and tagging them #NationalSelfiePortraitGallery.